Jets move Trouba: Defenceman, first-rounder come back from Rangers

The first big domino in the Winnipeg Jets off-season puzzle has fallen and it includes turning the page on Jacob Trouba.

On Monday night, the Jets announced they had traded Trouba to the New York Rangers for fellow defenceman Neal Pionk and a 2019 first-round pick, 20th overall.

That draft pick previously belonged to the Jets before they traded it to the Rangers along with left-winger Brendan Lemieux for centre Kevin Hayes prior to the NHL trade deadline.

Trouba was expected to be moved at the 2019 NHL draft in Vancouver on Friday, but Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff found a deal he liked and made the move.

It was always going to be difficult for the Jets to “win” a trade involving Trouba and at first blush, that’s still the case.

There’s no debating it’s the Rangers who receive the best player in the deal and their accelerated reload now includes Trouba and Adam Fox on the back end and, most likely, Finnish sniper Kaapo Kakko with the second-overall selection.

As for the Jets, they receive a competitive, top-four defenceman in Pionk who has 101 NHL games of experience under his belt.

Whether he’s ready to try to take on Trouba’s minutes on the top pairing with Josh Morrissey remains to be seen.

“It’s premature. There are still lots of moving parts or balls in the air, however you want to describe where we’re at as an organization right now,” Cheveldayoff said during a conference call on Monday. (Pionk) has had the opportunity to play in that kind of role with the Rangers. It’s up to (Jets head coach) Paul (Maurice) to decide.

“He’s a young player that we believe has upside that is going to continue to grow. He’s got (101) games in the NHL. He’s someone that we think given the group of players that we have here in our organization from a forward standpoint that he’s going to complement very, very well.

“He’s a guy who has won a championship (NCAA Frozen Four title in his sophomore season at the University of Minnesota-Duluth) and been part of a winning organization, (has) a winning pedigree. He’ll definitely kill penalties for us. Where his usage will be, that will shake out closer to training camp.”

Pionk, who is also a restricted free agent with arbitration rights, will be under Jets control for longer than just next season — and the same could not be said for Trouba.

After dealing their past two first-round picks to bolster the second-line centre position, the Jets obviously felt it was important to trade back into the first round — where they should be able to find a player that can help them down the road on an entry-level contract (most likely in two-to-three years time).

Is it an ideal return for the Jets?

Of course not.

In a perfect world, they would have received a more experienced guy with a bit more offence to his game and probably some additional term on his contract.

But Pionk has some upside, his best hockey is probably going to be ahead of him and he’s not going to cost anywhere near the $7 million or so Trouba likely would have been awarded in arbitration.

That point is important when you consider the Jets still need to get forwards Patrik Laine, Kyle Connor and Andrew Copp signed as restricted free agents.

Trouba, who was chosen ninth overall in the 2012 NHL draft, is coming off the best season of his NHL career, putting up eight goals and 50 points in 82 games.

It was the type of season he envisioned for himself when Trouba asked for a trade back in the spring of 2016 and it was rewarding personally, given all that he had been through — including going to arbitration with the Jets last summer before a $5.5 million award was handed out.

“I always thought I had it in me, but I had to work up to it and get there,” Trouba said in a telephone interview on Monday night. “I honestly don’t think I’m really there (at his ceiling) yet. I have more that I can do and more that I can bring to the table.

“But there are different opportunities, different situations and I have a good idea of the player that I can be. I’m not there yet, but I’m going to get there.”

For the Rangers, being able to secure a top-pairing blue-liner was an easy decision to make — even if it meant moving a top-four defenceman and a first-rounder to do so.

“He obviously is a player that we would covet and most teams would (with) what he can do and provide, which is a lot,” Rangers GM Jeff Gorton said during a conference call. “He’s a big defenceman, he can play against the best players and he can provide offence. He’s going to come here and he’s going to play big minutes. We can envision him playing in all scenarios and being a big part of it.”

Trouba was one year away from becoming an unrestricted free agent and the expectation was that he wasn’t going to sign an extension with the Jets, so he was most likely to be on the move this off-season.

Although keeping Trouba for one more season to play out his contract before departing for nothing as an unrestricted free agent was considered, the Jets felt the best option was to secure a future asset and add a player that can step right into the lineup.

“It’s certainly something that doesn’t just happen. There’s been lots of groundwork on many different fronts that we’ve been looking at,” said Cheveldayoff, noting he did not grant other teams permission to negotiate a long-term deal with Trouba after trade talks heated up. “With the opportunity not to get a long-term deal in Winnipeg here, we just felt it was best to open up the door to the possibility of trading him and today is the day we finalized it. We surveyed all the options and looked at all the different options and opportunity costs, so to speak.

“You take stock of what the opportunities are in front of you. You make your decision and that’s something that over the course of time here, we knew what was out there in the market and this is what we wanted to do. There’s no question we have a challenging summer still ahead of us. This was a necessary first step for us to take, and we’ll move on to the next. There are lots of things on the go. It’s probably an unprecedented time of conversation between all the general managers. We’ll see if there are some other things that make some sense for us going forward.”

This Week's Flyers

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.